To camp!

Zeke and I are headed off to camp today! Woo hoo! I had planned to leave early this morning, but was in quite a tired funk yesterday and didn't get packed etc, so we'll be leaving post nap-time today. We've got a 7 hour drive ahead of us, not too bad. I just need to get the house in order, make a couple more dishes for Daniel to eat while we're gone, and pack. I can do that in the next couple hours, right?? Right! We'll be back in about 10 days!

I love Virginia

Virginia is a wonderful place! Can I possibly explain to you how thoroughly happy I am here? I just love it beyond words.

We're well settled-in and we've gotten into a nice routine (which you've surely noticed hardly includes blogging!). Daniel works extremely long hours right now, but he loves the job. I've been learning how to quilt! A friend over at the farm has been teaching me, and she's a great teacher. In exchange I've been teaching her how to knit- oh the crafty fun we've been having! Right now I'm working on a small crib-sized quilt for Zeke's fast approaching second birthday. Previously mentioned friend had extra squares that she had already cut which she gave me! The fabric is all boy-prints- bugs, frogs, pigs, planets, more bugs. It's predominately blue and green. I got a black and white flannel music-note fabric to go on the back and green fabric for the binding. I would put pictures up but our computer has a wee virus on my user, and I can't access my pictures from Daniel's user. Oh well! Anyway, my quilt top is done and i have the three layers pinned together to start the actual quilting. I need to stop at the sewing shop for some supplies today (did I mention there is an absolutely wonderful fabric shop in our little town? And an adorable yarn shop!! Oh sweet little town, I love you!). On Saturday I picked up fabric for my first big quilt project-- a twin sized quilt for me! Our bed is queen sized but I don't feel quite up to such a daunting project just yet. I got 7 different fabrics, all blues and tans and browns, about half some sort of flower print and the other half just various designs. I had such a hard time picking out fabric, and went in with a completely different quilt planned in my mind (namely one with pinks, pale yellows, pale blues, pale greens, and white). For some reason that just wasn't working for me and I gravitated towards all these rich blue colors. I decided to just go with my intuition. I wish I could put up a picture! I'm so excited to start this new quilt, but probably won't start it for a few weeks, as I am planning a trip to Ohio shortly.

Once the computer is fixed I will grace this poor blog with some quilting pictures!

I've also been learning to can. I love canning! And I love quilting. Both these things have been on my "learn how to" list for a very long time. It was amazing to me that as soon as we got here I crossed paths with people who not only know how to do these things but really wanted to teach me how, too! In addition to that, due to the simplicity of life the flood forced on us (aka not having to maintain all our stuff-- less stuff to clean and organize, less laundry to do, etc) I have much more time for learning. It's been such a blessing to me to learn these things! It reminds me that there is a season for everything. Now is my quilting and canning season. :)

Zekeisms

Poor Zeke, my blog used to be completely centered around him! Now that he's big and healthy I guess I don't think to write about him as much. But my how he has grown! He's a big 21-month old now, his birthday fast approaching. Here are a few new things he's been saying lately:

kakack-- cracker (he says this constantly. He loves crackers)
lady-- Sadie, our dog
poe poe-- poop
diapo-- diaper
baybay-- baby
buddy-- I call him "little buddy" all the time so he started saying it.

Right now he's hiding behind the couch playing with "Lady," who he loves. I'm so thankful she's a gentle, good dog because Zeke sees no problem with poking her face and yanking on her ears and tail. We're constantly saying "gentle Zeke, gentle!!" and he will remember for a while but soon forgets, of course. She has never once nipped or growled at him. The other day I came into the living room to find them both underneath the couch. Zeke just had a hand sticking out. He's in such an exploratory age. I love to watch him play. He looks at books all the time, and is constantly bringing us books to read him. His favorite is "the going to bed book." What would we do without that book?! He also loves carrying around his puppy (which is actually a lion) and hugging it and patting it's back. I mean, how sweet is that??! He's a very sensitive and gentle little guy. He jabbers to himself and to us all the time. I love when he is obviously telling a story or giving us important information in his little language, it melts my heart! He loves his shoes. He loves his bike. When I sit him in time out cries but doesn't even attempt to get up and escape, which I was surprised by and do not understand, but hey it makes my life easier! He loves brushing his teeth. He can play by himself for hours and stay entertained. He can follow lots of simple directions and find objects in other rooms of the house. He loves loves loves his two blankies- he can sleep anywhere if they are with him. He really needs a haircut but I can't bear to do it just yet, and he's too wiggly anyway. He's outgrown all the clothes I never thought he would grow into. Oh my pumpkin, I love you so much!!

Poor neglected blog...

We are in Virginia now. I know, it's been too long. So sorry blog-land. The picture is the view out our front door!

It's been amazing how God has worked things out for us-- the duplex we were planning to rent fell through because the owner decided to lease it to someone who was signing a year lease instead, so I was scrambling like mad to find somewhere to stay! The whole issue was causing a lot of anxiety for me, seeing as we were just flooded out of our home, and then we're supposed to be moving to Virginia in a week and didn't have anywhere to go!! Well of course God had a plan and he just dropped a lovely place right in our lap, it's perfect for us, and much nicer than I was expecting. I am so thankful! Our landlord is a friend of a friend of a friend of my mothers (got that?!), and he attends the church we are attending. When I spoke with him on the phone I could tell that the house was going to be out of our price range, and it was. When I told him thanks but we couldn't afford it, he so graciously gave us $450 OFF each months rent!! Isn't that amazing?! It's so reassuring to know that there are good, caring people out there. Nearly everywhere we've ever moved we've found good people.

Meanwhile, Daniel had been working at Polyface farm for 2 weeks now, and he is LOVING it (of course!!). I am so happy for him, and proud of him for doing a good job. He leaves at 5am and doesn't get home until at least 9pm-- a couple nights a week he doesn't get home until about 11 or later. He's sporting an awesome farmers tan. He rocks my world.

We're going to a Mennonite church. We aren't Mennonite, but whatever, it's an awesome church. Honestly I wouldn't even know it was Mennonite except for that it says so on the sign out front. The people there have been overwhelmingly kind and helpful. We arrived in Virginia with just our cars and the things in them, no furniture, etc. because of the flood. In less than a week of being here the church community has provided us with: dining room table and chairs, two couches, dishes, misc. kitchen items, bed for zeke, bedroom set for us, lamp, iron & ironing board, sheets, blankets, pillows, and friendship. I can't believe how loving all these people have been, and I'm so thankful. They've made it such an easy transition. In many ways I don't want to leave Virginia-- it's beautiful here, Daniel loves working on the farm (although that's just for the summer), and we already have a community of people here to become friends with. I love being a Christian, I love the community it brings.

My mom is coming down from Ohio for a visit, she will be here in less than an hour, which means i need to go clean the bathroom-- i cut my own hair today, and it's still all over the floor. The hair that's still on my head looks cute, I'm so glad it turned out ok!!!

Rand Paul!

I am so happy to use my 200th blog post to say that Rand Paul won the republican nomination for Senate in Kentucky today!!!!!

slippers and today

I finnished these slippers late last night!

They were started when we were flooded-in at the neighbor's house a couple weeks ago. I'm not normally a crocheter, but my friend Aimee has been crocheting non-stop, and she inspired me to crochet the one thing I know how to make- granny squares. I even made a special trip to the store to get a crochet hook. The right slipper is made of 6 regular sized granny squares, the left slipper is made of one giant granny square and two regular sized ones-- sooo much less seaming-up work at the end! The two look slightly different- the right slipper has a white square on the toe and heel, whereas the left has only the white square on the toe. I seamed the left one a bit differently on accident (hey, I'm not a crocheter!) so they look a little different... but whatever. No big deal. I like the way the right one looks best, except for the white heel. The left one fits better. Future slippers will match.... and there will be future slippers! If we're pals in real life, I'll probably be making you a pair! Today Daniel and Zeke are headed up to Ohio to visit his mom-- which means I have the whole day to myself! I've just finished about half the cleaning I need to do... now I'm enjoying a cup of coffee, my "farmer's market" yankee candle (it got wet in the flood but it's ok!) and an Edgar Meyer/Bela Fleck CD (also caked in mud... I washed it off, and it just has a few skippy-parts on it so far). I have a lot to get done while they're gone but I couldn't resist the urge to sit down and write about my slippers. After I finish cleaning up around here (dishes, put laundry away, make bed, drink more coffee) I'm headed over to our land to feed the cows and work on cleaning up the mess that is still there.

We're one week out from leaving for Daniel's internship, and we FINALLY found a place to stay... hopefully. We couldn't find anything for four months, so we're signing a 6 month lease on a duplex in town. I'm excited to get there and get settled in. I spoke with the owner on Saturday, and he is e-mailing me the rental application.... so as soon as we finish the paperwork we should be in business...

Daniel and Zeke cuddling yesterday

I already sort of miss them!

Have a good day!

Flood (yes, this is late in coming, I know. We've been busy!)

So did you hear about all the flooding in Tennessee and Kentucky? We sure did. Our entire property flooded! As in every single field was at least 8 feet under water. It was crazy! Nearly all of our belongings were destroyed, and our travel trailer (aka the bungalow) which we had been living in was filled about 2/3rds with water. Fortunately the bungalow is insured, but nothing else. Good news: we're all ok, the animals are ok (the neighbor cut the fence and let them onto his much more elevated property), the vehicles are ok (sort of- my car needs a little lovin- it's headed to the shop right now actually), and some of our stuff is salvageable. Our lap-top was at Daniel's brother's house, the camera was in my purse. My cello was at my mom's house. In fact, Daniel's grandmother has already washed all of our sopping-wet and muddy stinky clothes. All the instruments we have (excessive amounts, actually!) are ok, except for the violin bows. We had time to grab some things before we left, but I certainly didn't expect the water to get so high. There are a lot of things I would have grabbed had I known what was coming! I guess I should tell the whole story from the beginning.... (and I use too many parenthesis, I think).

So we woke up Sunday morning (May 2nd) to get ready for church. After I showered, I looked outside and saw that water was half way up the field from the creek. Uh-oh. I told Daniel he should probably move his car b/c the water is already lapping against the tires... he gets up, moves the car, moves my car, tries to move my dads truck (he's recently lent us his old truck) and gets it stuck in the mud. Neghbor drives by, stops, and helps us un-stick the truck. Our friend Nathan arrived to check on us and see if we needed any help. Another neighbor stops and says we'd better leave soon before we're flooded in. We should have left right then.... instead we mucked about for a few minutes trying to take care of the animals and generally prepare things for lots of water. We threw a lot of boxes that were outside in the hoop house (aka barn) into the bungalow because we never imagined the water would get that high! I couldn't quite think straight so I didn't accomplish much of anything except for wasting time... which led to me driving my car through water, it dying, me hopping out in water almost up to my knees and pushing the car the rest of the way through the water, arriving safely on the other side, and then a neighbor informing me that there was much worse flooding just a quarter mile down the road and I couldn't get through even if I wanted to. He kindly pulled my car up his driveway with his truck and we watched the water continue to rise. I was now flooded in with Zeke and Sadie (the dog) at said neighbor's house (Danny and Denise- great neighbors! They feel like family now!). Daniel is still over on our property, now completely flooded in. He waded over about 20 minutes after me, leaving his car and our truck parked on the highest spot of the road (thankfully the water didn't make it that high!). We all settled into Danny and Denise's house (the cozy-est cabin-ish house you've ever seen! I could have moved in!), they feed us breakfast, gave us dry clothes, and we watch the weather channel all day and stood on the porch watching the water rise. I knitted and crocheted up a storm! (no pun intended). I was so anxious all day that I couldn't eat and felt horribly sick. The water rose to just a few feet from the side of Danny and Denise's house! The electricity flickered on and off 3 or 4 times- we kept expecting it to stay off, but it always turned back on, thankfully. Finally the rain slowed down. We all stayed up really late to watch the weather channel and see what would happen next. It was one of the most nerve-racking days of my life! Finally, we all went to bed- Daniel, Zeke, and I in the guest room, and Nathan (he got flooded in with us!) on the couch. When we woke up in the morning we were still flooded in (as in we couldn't drive over to stay with family yet), but the water had gone down enough that we could go see our property. Daniel went first to see the damage--- water had filled the bungalow about 2/3rds of the way full. All of our belongings in the hoop house were either washed away down the creek or destroyed by water and mud. It was very sad to see, but I was over my anxiety. I had already resolved in my head that everything was gone, and so when I did find anything that could be salvaged, I was very happy about that. There was one thing I really wanted to find-- a quilt that my Great Aunt Lucy had made. I remember the day she died (I must have been 9 or so) we went to see her, and I was very sad- I loved her. I remember picking up the quilt out of a basket and asking the hospice nurse if I could have it. She was so sweet- she started crying and said, "of course, honey!". This quilt has been one of my most treasured possessions ever, and I was going to be so sad if it had washed away or been ruined. I looked for it the first few days of clean up but couldn't find it. FINALLY I found a box labeled "aunt Lucy's quilt", which was soaking wet, squashed to a pancake, and covered with mud. Well I opened it and found the quilt-- I had packed it in one of those giant zip-lock bags! Amazingly it was completely dry!! See, God is so good to us! He knows we can only handle so much. I would have been so sad if that quilt had been ruined, but He was gracious to me and let me find it in good condition.

Since that day we've been cleaning up the mess. Our bungalow was hauled away to the junk yard. We've filled sooo many contractor garbage bags with stuff to throw away and have slowly been taking it truckload by truckload to a dumpster. Daniel's grandparents are very graciously letting us live in their RV, which is parked at Daniel's parent's house. We will be here another week, at which point we will leave to go to Virginia for the Polyface Farm internship. We've been so busy getting prepared for that and dealing with all the flood drama, so I've felt rather overwhelmed. But we'll get there... we make progress every day. I think the hardest part for me right now is that we are technically homeless- we don't have a place that is our own. It's given me a lot of perspective on the fact that I actually have no home here-- heaven is my home.

Now for pictures...

Daniel and Nathan, trying to decide what to do. You can see the tree line in the background where the creek is supposed to be. The creek is normally down in about a 12 foot trench type thing, so you can understand how much water it took to get to what you see in the picture. This was maybe 45 minutes after we had woken up to get ready for church.
This was taken right before I left to try and go stay with family. It was too late, I was already flooded in, I just didn't know it yet. You can see Nathan's truck in the background-- the battery was dead, so they couldn't move it. I think Nathan was pretty sad about that. Eventually it was entirely under water.

View from the end of the neighbor's drive way an hour or so later. The road I had driven on to get there is now completely immersed. Eventually the fence posts you can see in the foreground of the picture are completely under water, too. If you look closely, right in the center of the picture by the pine tree you can see our vehicles parked on a little hill (kind of behind the tree). Our property is all to the left of that-- it was like a giant lake (except for our big hill, it was fine of course- too bad we hadn't already built a house up there!).
Daniel, a few days later, going through the last of the boxes. We've thrown 90% of our belongings away. My darling husband took a picture of every single book so we can eventually replace them. I can't even tell you how many hundreds and hundreds of books we must have had. You can see our happy pigs in the background :)
So that's what's been going on with us. Sorry I haven't written more lately-- I have lots to write about! But it seems that when my blog would be the most interesting is also when I have the least amount of time to spend on it. I'm sure it's the same for you other bloggers. Anyway, I'll try to write again sometime soon. :)